Animal mimicry artist Edoya Nekohachi, 63, is a third-generation Japanese performer whose precise renditions of hundreds of bird species' songs, as well as frog croaks, dog barks and dolphin whistles have been amusing audiences of all ages for more than 40 years.

As cotton-thick snow falls on St. Catherine Street in the heart of the province of Quebec's largest city, Iwao Tsumura works away in his dingy second-floor shop.

Generally speaking, an architect’s style is defined by particular forms or shapes. There’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s prominent horizontal lines, for instance; Le Corbusier’s simple white boxes; or, more recently, the deliberately abstract masses of Frank Gehry — of Guggenheim Bilbao fame.

Japanese kite artist Tetsuya Kishida, 89, has been creating and flying kites since the age of 6. He used to be a salesman for the steel industry and he later sold bonsai. In his late 40s, he finally turned his hobby of painting kites ...

Living in a tiny temporary house isn’t all bad. “I always wanted to see what it felt like to live in a little apartment, like one of those newlywed couples,” says Itsuko Suzuki, 63. “Cleaning house is a snap,” says Keiko Sugahara, 60. “You ...

The Fukushima Aiikuen orphanage sits on 7 hectares of wooded hills — that’s about the area of 15 or 16 soccer pitches — on the outskirts of the city of Fukushima. There’s an outdoor sports field, a campsite and plenty of lawns for the ...

When it comes to gender equality, Japan has never failed to disappoint.

Yukari Horie, 30, is managing director of Arrow Arrow, a Tokyo-based NPO that offers consulting to companies with female workers who are in the later stages of their pregnancy or who have just become moms and are wondering how to adjust their work styles ...

Maco Yoshioka is the founder of Madre Bonita, a nonprofit group that offers postpartum fitness programs for women using elastic exercise balls. Yoshioka, 40, who studied sports physiology at the University of Tokyo, says she became aware of physical and mental difficulties for new ...

Yu Negoro, 40, is a documentary filmmaker who has delved deep into the issues of gender and sexuality in Japanese society. Her first project was a series of three short films dealing with women suffering from eating disorders, a condition Neguro suffered in her ...

Eiichiro Amakasu, 70, is a carpenter who designs and builds traditional Japanese homes and their surrounding gardens. He is an expert of sukiya, a residential architectural style that is typically associated with Japanese tea houses.

On Dec. 14, 2012, two days before the Lower House election in which the Democratic Party of Japan headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was eclipsed as the conservative Liberal Democratic Party swept back to power in a landslide, a one-page advert with a ...